Cockling

Sorting through the photos from the last few months I came across some oldies but goodies. This happened a while ago, mid May-ish if i recall correctly…

So we were tipped off by some people that you can go "cockling" if you go a bit out of town on the habour. Our friends Kit and Natalie, who represent the fine state of Illinois, invited us along with 3 other Americans and another Aussie along for a Cockling adventure. All told one of the eight of us had been cockling before, a long time ago and not in Dunedin. But her dad was a fisherman, so we figured that was experience enough and rolled with it.

It turns out getting the Cockles (yes, plenty of very predictable jokes were made regarding Cockles) is the easy part, you just go at low tide and start digging and they are everywhere.

Kit, Burt and Caroline

Kate in the sand

Natalie

The time consuming bit about cockling is the preparation. Rinse, Rinse, Rinse, Rinse, scrub and rinse some more, then boil them forever.

Burt scrubbing away

The final product is this…..

Not much left for the end product. But it was cool to do, even though I can't eat them.

4th of July!

For the 4th of July weekend Kit and Natalie threw a 4th of July pot luck at their apartment. Lots of good patriotic food was rolled out, sadly no photos of the spread but I will tell you the creamy pasta salad, the 'liberty holes' (doughnuts), 'footlong of freedom' (sausages), 'victory wieners' (veggie dogs) and many more scrumptious treats did not fail to disappoint.

After the food the celebration of freedom continued with some dancing and merrymaking.

Woke up Saturday to a very nice and sunny day so we shook out the cobwebs of liberation from the night before and took a long drive out to the mouth of the harbor where it meets the ocean. Walked on not one but TWO beaches. The first was Long Beach, home a long beach (go figure), a climbing craig and the infamous caves in which raves and dance parties illegally thrown.


The next beach was Aramoana, again another nice beach, we missed seeing the seals, sea lions and penguins that usually frequent the beach be we did come upon this tidal flat where hundreds of crabs had buried themselves in the sand.

One last victory jump for the 4th.